Monday, July 31, 2017

Here are my first 6 months of circles sewn into their rows. I have 15 rows of 12 squares...each square finished at 4 inches. Right now, they are in groups of four rows with one row of three strips for ease of quilting. As things stand, I may be quilting this on my featherweight! I do plan to add a narrow inner border and an outer border.

For the layout, I divided my circles into light and dark of each color and put the whites and neutral in the center. I worked in a circle from the center and put them in order according to a basic color wheel. There were some surprises...a lot less red and green and more blues than I expected.

For those of you that might not be familiar with the Quilty 365 project, the object is to make one circle a day for a year. Your circle might represent your feelings, temperature, or even scrap reduction. I've done it all and also marked some holidays. We link up on the first of every month atDaisy and Jack Handmade.

I've been making my circles with a fusible which is then turned forming a circle which has less points than if I tried to do basic needle turn applique...arthritis has made my fingers fairly stiff. In my first Quilty 365 post, I showed how I did this. All my Quilty posts are labelled, so if you want to see a closer view of them, just click the label.

Monday, July 24, 2017

I started the Quilty 365(2017) project with Leanne of .Daisy and Jack Handmade in January after seeing her post. I did make circles to include the first 2 weeks of that month so that January was a complete month. Unlike some BOM's and other monthly or weekly projects, I've kept up with it. Some months have been a scramble and I'm running dangerously low on fabrics but I now have a complete 6 months of circles on 4.5" squares.

It was while I was working on my July circles that I started wondering how I was going to put them together. I went back and reviewed my Pinterest board and then it hit me...some of those quilts are huge! Way more than I can handle in my limited space. I started laying them out and found that I have 15 rows of 12 squares each. That almost covered my 5x8' livingroom rug. After some rearranging, I came up with a layout and started sewing. Here's were I'm at currently...halfway through the year and halfway through my rows.

These are hanging on my front door. My seasonal door dec until I can get them joined together!

Monday, July 17, 2017

I've been sewing along with the row by row monthly quilt along at Quilter Chic. I did complete rows one and four, which you can see here. Row 5 is a fence with quilts hung on it...lots of little pieces! It's been very slow progress but I have just two half blocks to go on it. Row 6 is another fence which I haven't even started yet. Finishing those two rows is my to do list for this week!

Row 7 came out this past Saturday...houses at the seaside...fun to do and a very nice break from little bitty fence pieces!

Each row is 48" long and won't fit into a single camera shot...this is the best I could get.

Rows 2 and 3 haven't been started yet and I've decided not to do them. Very nice rows but they just didn't fit into what I wanted. I finally decided that it's called In MY Neighborhood so I'm replacing them with my own rows. This is my cat, Licorice, chasing birds. She doesn't catch them...just likes to scatter them!

I got out my graph paper and started in. The birds were fairly easy. I based them on a free foundation pieced design...seen here, that I bookmarked several years ago. I drew the cat, carefully counted all the squares to make sure that the size was right, added seam allowances to all pieces and double checked to make sure that the design was sewable without Y seams and made a list of all the pieces needed. Halfway through the sewing, I realized that the cat was coming out way to large! I made some adjustments such as changing the bow to a collar and taking a curve out of the tail and hind leg and the final version does fit the size I needed. I've gone over my pattern several times since and I still can't find where I went wrong. I now have a whole new respect for pattern designers!

Thursday, July 13, 2017

I've been doing the monthly mini quilt sew along from the Sew Can She blog. The patterns are free and I'm enjoying seeing the new one for each month. But I'm behind for various reasons...didn't really like the pattern, not the right fabrics on hand and basic procrastination are some of the answers. I'll probably be doing last month's sunflower (or daisy) in Fall colors!.

This month's is a cute red. white and blue design. Since I didn't get to it before the fourth, I changed the colors somewhat..

after all, a ladybug needs some flowers to lit on!

The binding came out better than usual, but the corners are still a struggle. I've got the mitering down but folding the corners out correctly is still iffy. More mini's will be coming up until I can get the process correct.

Friday, July 7, 2017

This is a rough layout of my One Block Wonder experiment. I still have about 5 or 6 hexagons to assemble and the ones above are pinned at the middle, which is why the sizes look a little off. I'm still not sure if this was the best fabric choice. I think I need more contrast color. This kind of just blends altogether. What do you all think?

Meanwhile, I'm behind two rows of the In My Neighborhood row by row quilt and I do want to do this month's Mini quilt from Sew She Can.. I'll finish those off while I decide where I want to go with the OBW project.

Monday, July 3, 2017

I've wanted to do a One Block Wonder quilt ever since I saw my first one about 2013. Last year, I even bought the Kindle version of the book. What stopped me? The fact that everything I read said that five or 6 yards of fabric was needed. I'm retired and I quilt on a budget so spending $50-$75 dollars on a fabric for a technique I might not like to do or choosing the wrong fabric didn't appeal to me. I still checked out clearance fabrics and sales with this technique in mind, but never found anything I liked enough to try.

Last week, I cleaned out one of my stash boxes in an effort to find enough interesting fabric pieces to complete my month of circles for the Quilty 365 project and I found this forgotten piece of Kaffe Fasset fabric.

I bought this years ago for an apparel top and kept it to remind me to pay attention to those little rulers that show the size of the pattern! No way was I going to wear it so it went into the bottom of the box. When I pulled it out, I found that the repeat was 12" and I did have enough to get the 6 layers needed even though the piece is only 2.5 yards. It won't be a large quilt, but enough to be a learning project.

I've still got lots of triangle to sew together but this is where I'm at with the few I've finished. The hexagons are pinned together.